Simon De La Rue: ‘Fair representation promotes the building of a fair society’

As a States watcher and a number-crunching nerd, it isn’t only on International Women’s Day that my thoughts turn to female representation in our parliament.

As I waited for the results to emerge from the 2020 election, I had pen, pad and calculator poised to record Guernsey’s progress on that front.

The experience was somewhat deflating in two ways.

Firstly, the disposal of the district system in favour of island-wide voting meant that – for stattos like myself – there was an interminable wait followed by all the data coming at once. It took all the fun out of it.

Yes, fun. I’m not proud.

Secondly, the seeming progress that saw the number of women in the States rise from five to 12 after the 2016 election, was partially reversed, with only eight elected out of 38 successful candidates.

So why did this happen?

Well, one thing I was able to establish when those numbers came through was that the electorate was not guilty of any aversion to female candidates.

It’s true that eight out of 38 is only 21.1% but then, only 28 of the 119 candidates were women, which is 23.5% – not a significant difference in ratios, I’d suggest.

Indeed, if a recent suggestion to reduce the number of deputies had been taken up and the number being elected had been, say, 24, then women would have made up 29.2% of the elected deputies, because all but one of the 14 to miss out would have been men.

Taking this line of analysis to the extreme, if we had reduced the number of deputies to just three, then we would have had a female majority. But I think deputies Heidi Soulsby and Andrea Dudley-Owen have been busy enough as it is.

Another way to examine electors’ preferences is to look at the number of votes being cast for each gender on the voting forms.

In all, 24,627 electors went to the polls and they cast a total of 637,567 individual votes.

On average, female candidates polled 8% more votes than their male counterparts – 5,679 votes each for women, compared to 5,259 for men.

We can argue about the significance of that, given the sample size, but we certainly cannot make the argument that the electorate preferred men.

The problem of under-representation of women in our parliament therefore comes down to the fact that not enough women are inspired to put themselves forward as candidates.

Or perhaps we should say that too many are put off.

Some make the argument that female deputies have been subject to abuse from the public – particularly on social media.

I can’t offer you any statistics in relation to that but I feel certain that male deputies are not exactly immune on that front.

A feminist States-watcher friend of mine suggested no woman would want to ‘waste their time arguing with a room full of misogynist, male deputies’, though when challenged, she did concede this was a generalisation.

Even if this were entirely, or even partly, true, there would be only one way to solve it – reach the critical mass necessary to make that impossible.

But there is one piece of evidence against there being ongoing gender prejudice within the male-dominated chamber – 50% of the women elected to the Assembly have been entrusted with a committee presidency.

Whatever the causes of under-representation, the solution appears to be to persuade more women to stand.

This is where Women In Public Life comes in.

Launched in January 2020 – nine months before the last general election – the organisation seeks to support women who might be tempted to stand for any type of public office.

It will be very interesting to see the effects of their work following a four-and-a-half-year run-up to next year’s general election in June.

‘States members make decisions on behalf of the whole island,’ said WIPL chair Shelaine Green.

‘Of course, they bring their skills to those decisions but they also bring their values and their life experience. That’s why it’s so important that the Assembly is both competent and as representative as possible.’

She went on to note that 66% of Guernsey’s deputies were men in their 50s or 60s at the time of the 2020 poll.

‘That’s inevitable if fewer women and younger people stand in the first place,’ she said.

‘Guernsey can only choose from what’s in front of it. There are more than 120 women in our politics group and several of them are young students, so we know there is a lot of interest out there in how the island is run. We’re doing everything we can to help convert that interest into standing for election.’

As the results emerge next summer, I’ll be there again with my pen, pad and calculator, waiting with avid interest.

Perhaps, one day, I will no longer feel the need – the gender of the incumbents might feel as insignificant as the colour of their eyes.

I don’t even think we need to hit 50% to believe we’ve reached equality. I just think we need to reach a point where, in the build-up to the polling, us lot in the media will find it hard to predict whether there will be more men or more women in the States.

And you may reasonably ask why this matters to me – a man in his 50s.

Well, for one thing, I’d like to think my daughter would feel as free to pursue a role in public office, in future years, as my son might.

But beyond that, I want my people’s deputies to be representative of the people.

Fair representation promotes – and a lack of representation hinders – the building of a fair society.

And if we can’t get that right for the one ‘minority’ which is actually in the majority, what chance have we got?